Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd - A Post-Jungian Perspective

First published 2010 

by Routledge 

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada 

by Routledge 

270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business 

Ø 2010 Helena Bassil-Morozow 

Typeset in Times by Gar®eld Morgan, Swansea, West Glamorgan 

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, 

Cornwall 

Paperback cover design by Andrew Ward 

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Bassil-Morozow, Helena Victor, 1978- 

Tim Burton : the monster and the crowd, a post-Jungian perspective / 

Helena Bassil-Morozow. 

p. cm. 

Includes ®lmography. 

Includes bibliographical references and index. 

ISBN 978-0-415-48970-6 (hardback) ± ISBN 978-0-415-48971-3 (pbk.) 1. 

Burton, Tim, 1958ÐCriticism and interpretation. 2. Monsters in motion 

pictures.3.Fantasyinmotionpictures.I.Title. 

PN1998.3.B875B37 2010 

791.4302'33092±dc22 

2009032724 

ISBN: 978-0-415-48970-6 (hbk) 

ISBN: 978-0-415-48971-3 (pbk) 

http://www.jungarena.com/tim-burton-the-monster-and-the-crowd-9780415489713

Contents 

Preface ix 

Foreword xi 

Acknowledgements xiii 

Introduction 1 

1 The child 33 

2 The monster 51 

3 The superhero 79 

4 The genius 113 

5 The maniac 139 

6 The monstrous society 159 

Conclusion 177 

Filmography 179 

Bibliography 185 

Index 195 


Introduction 

The child with a thousand faces 

À poet has the imagination and psychology of a child, for his impressions 

of the world are immediate, however profound his ideas of the world may 

be,' says Andrey Tarkovsky in his self-exploratory book, Sculpting in Time. 

If the benchmark for true artistic creativity is purity of imagination, a 

certain naivety of outlook, freshness of vision and a stubborn faith in one's 

own work, then Tim Burton passes the test with top grades. His `creative 

child', however, is much younger than that of Tarkovsky, in whom the 

wide-eyed search for meaning is veiled with mature perspicacity and gravitation 

towards graceful existentialist symbolism. By contrast, Burton's 

inner puer has not grown up into a fully ¯edged auteur. He has never 

mastered some of the indispensable principles of cinematic auteurism: the 

depth and complexity of concepts, the re®nement and originality of cinematic 

movement or the stringent control over the narrative. The majority of 

his ®lms have vague, myth-like structures, and are so conceptually ùncluttered' 

(yet visually rich) that they can be enjoyed by children and adults 

alike. Besides, his ®lms often are about children; to be more precise ± about 

one child, a misunderstood being whose inability (or refusal) to grow up 

puts him into a con¯ict with the `sensible', but senseless, society. What 

makes the puer different, and unique, is the ability to create new worlds ± 

something that `normal' people do not possess. 

This òutcast' image can appear in various forms in Burton's movies: the 

persecuted monster, the mad genius, the maniac, the un®nished young man 

living in his own Gothic dreamworld, and the disturbed superhero who 

®ghts his evil alter ego. These guises overlap and amalgamate (`the child' is 

also `the monster', etc.), weaving a complex picture of the typical Burtonian 

male character ± a strange little boy who grows up to be a weird, but 

talented, mis®t. The mis®t invariably has a dark imagination, is never 

accepted by the common people, and is sometimes even hunted down by 

them (Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka). Surprisingly, despite 


2 Introduction 

his ìntroverted pariah' reputation, Burton enjoys great commercial success 

with the very `crowd' of which his characters are so wary. 

This book is about Tim Burton's use of the different guises of the image 

of the `dark child' in his ®lms, including the monster, the genius, the 

superhero, the maniac and the trickster. Thus, Chapter 1 (`The Child') 

traces the mythological, literary and psychological roots of the image that 

dominates Burton's ®lms. Jungian (mainly Jung and Erich Neumann) and 

post-Jungian theories are my principal tools in this chapter, which deals 

with the child archetype in mythology and psychology of the individual (my 

justi®cation of the choice of Jung over any other psychologies will appear 

later in the Introduction). 

Chapter 2 is devoted to the `monster' guise of the child, and covers 

Edward Scissorhands, Frankenweenie, Batman Returns and Sweeney Todd. It 

explores the psychosocial aspects of the monster ®gure (introversion, 

nonconformity, disability, hatred and rejection by society, abandonment by 

father/God, borderline personality qualities); its religious, philosophical 

and mythological implications (the son±father/man±God relationship and 

its breakdown and representation of this relationship in world mythology 

and religions); and the cinematic and ®ctional freaks that had impressed 

Burton in his youth (Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, King 

Kong, Godzilla, etc.). 

Chapter 3 is about Tim Burton's `superheroes'. The superhero part of the 

Burtonian male character, quite predictably, wants to free the world from 

evil. His twofold inner/outer ®ght with what he perceives as evil in his 

culture and his own psyche is a crucial part of his quest for psychological 

unity. Since Batman Returns (1992) the individuation of the male character 

in Burton's ®lms became enhanced by encounters with charismatic (but 

menacing) anima ®gures ± Corpse Bride, Catwoman and Jenny/the witch in 

Big Fish. The hero's adventures will be analysed using the spiritual quest, 

doppelgaÈnger, anima and father/God motifs. I will also discuss Burton's 

infantile superheroes ± the Stainboy and Paul Reubens's original creation, 

Pee Wee from Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985). 

Chapter 4 mainly concerns the `genius' guise of Burton's male characters 

(Vincent, Victor from Frankenweenie, Ed Wood and Willie Wonka). 

Burton's freaks grow up to become raw talents. As a rule, their creativity 

expresses itself in rather ambitious Frankensteinesque activities such as, for 

instance, monster-making. Vincent Malloy dreams of creating à terrible 

zombie' out of his dog Abercrombie; little Victor from Frankenweenie 

realises this dream ± he actually revives his dog Sparky, who had been hit 

by a car, and turns him into a little `doggy' version of the Frankenstein 

monster; Ed Wood, a mad Hollywood director, makes painfully bad horror 

movies; and Willy Wonka, the virtuoso chocolatier, possesses a collection of 

weird wax dolls and produces monstrosities out of various edible substances. 

`The dark child' of Burton is invariably gifted, lonely, and perceived 



as insane by the hyperbolically `normal' people surrounding him. Following 

the footpath of the traditional Frankenstein narrative, Burton puts a lot of 

emphasis on the unique abilities of the creator, his overwhelming ambition, 

his difference from the crowd, and his strong association with the hideous 

freak to whom he gives life. 

The demonic side of Burton's freaks is examined in Chapter 5 (`The 

Maniac'). It picks up where the previous chapter left off, and focuses on the 

anti-hero, the doppelgaÈnger (or the shadow, to use Jungian terminology). In 

Burton's ®lms it usually manifests itself in the villainous (`Mr Hyde') side of 

the Burtonian hero ± the dangerous psychopath. These characters illustrate 

the evil, unstable, perverted, totally asocial and antisocial side of `the 

genius'. The chapter will incorporate Burton's ®rst commercially successful 

features, Beetlejuice, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 

Batman and Batman Returns. 

Burton's two famous tricksters, Michael Keaton's Betelgeuse and Jack 

Nicholson's Joker, could have been discussed either under the `monster' or 

`the maniac' title, but I have chosen to put them in the latter category 

because of the aggressive nature of these characters. Betelgeuse is a 

trickster-like creature who oozes danger; he is rough, mad, evil and uncontrollable. 

Nicholson's Joker is even darker than Keaton's Betelgeuse, and 

uses his sinister creativity to torture and murder people. 

Chapter 6 is devoted to the much-criticised Mars Attacks! and Planet of 

the Apes. These ®lms are exceptions from Burton's `the monster and the 

crowd' routine. They are not about the usual outcast's struggle for acceptance 

by society, and they are not built around the main character's internal 

®ght with the personal doppelgaÈnger. Instead, in these ®lms Burton 

attempts to go further in his investigations of the con¯ict between individualism 

and collectivity, and focuses on society itself, on its dark, authoritarian 

and inhuman aspects. In Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes, the 

collective shadow takes the form of an outside invader (Martians or 

humanoid apes) and attempts to eliminate the human race. In this chapter I 

will try to explain why Burton's attempts to make ®lms about the personal 

shadow usually earn critical acclaim and have great commercial success, 

while his renditions of the collective shadow are seen as òver the top' and 

super®cial. 

Of course, I could have organised the book diachronically rather than 

synchronically, i.e. examined Burton's ®lms in chronological order. This 

would have given me the opportunity to study his `technical' progress as a 

®lm director, as well as examine the development of themes and motifs in 

his ®lms. This is how it has been done by most of my predecessors 1 : Mark 

1 Except Alison McMahan, author of The Films of Tim Burton (2005), who discusses Burton's 

works in terms of genre and stylistic features. 



Salisbury (Burton on Burton, 1995; 2000; 2006); Le Blanc and Odell (Tim 

Burton, pocket essential series, 2005); Jim Smith and Clive Matthews (Tim 

Burton, 2007); and Edwin Page (Gothic Fantasy: the Films of Tim Burton, 

2007). However, my opinion is that in Burton's case, the classic careeroverview 

approach is not very effective ± simply because his style, methods 

and themes do not change signi®cantly throughout his directorial career. 

My choice of the synchronic layout is based on the assumption that the 

thematic range of Burton's ®lms is more interesting to examine than his 

evolution as a director. Jungian psychology, with its propensity towards 

syntagmatic analysis of myths and a certain lack of respect for paradigmatic 

systematisation, is always handy for the investigation of thematic 

ranges. 

Besides, I still use diachrony ± but of a different kind. Burton's ®lms 

traditionally deal with cultural and psychological issues pertaining to 

modern Western societies, from the end of the eighteenth century to the 

present day. While the synchronic approach breaks the unity of Burton's 

oeuvre, and the continuity of his protagonist, into many fragments (the 

different faces of the Burtonian child), I can nevertheless pull the fragments 

together by putting them onto the diachronic scale of modernity, thus 

establishing a new kind of continuity. This new diachrony reveals the face 

of the modern man as Burton usually depicts him ± broken into pieces, 

then sewn together, and struggling to ®nd a stable centre within himself ± 

the centre which would help him not to fall apart again. 

The question of style 

Tim Burton has a singular vision, now confused with highbrow directing, 

now with mainstream commercialism ± and yet he steadily remains in a 

league of his own. He is certainly not your typical àrtistic' ®lmmaker; he is 

not a `camera and montage' person, breaking down, storyboarding each 

shot down to the ®nest detail, and then torturing his team and actors in an 

existential attempt to recreate his unique but ephemeral vision. Unlike for 

Hitchcock, who famously used to storyboard every shot in his ®lms, or 

Spielberg, whose narratives are so very neat and smooth, narrative perfection 

would be completely out of place in Burton's works. In a Tim 

Burton ®lm you will not ®nd a long take choreographed with surgical 

precision, nor encounter an iconographic horse or a marble lion suddenly 

squeezed in between two other shots ± so as to invoke complex references 

or highlight a higher idea. Neither will you stumble upon an elegant conceptual 

dissociation between the different cinematic codes and sub-codes 

(for instance, a ®rst-person camera moving about in an empty ¯at while the 

invisible intradiegetic voice on the phone is having a seemingly banal 

conversation with his mother) in order to emphasise the deceptiveness and 

transience of reality: the irreparable gap between the ìnner' and the òuter'. 



No, Burton does not aim at this level of theoretical and conceptual complexity, 

and does not combine the cinematic means of expression in 

unexpected, groundbreaking ways, to achieve it. 

And this is, perhaps, for the best. In fact, experimental tracking shots, 

lions, horses, clever camera angles and avant-garde points of view would 

not be suitable for his creative purposes. Growing up inspired by the style 

of Dr Seuss (`the rhythm of his stuff spoke to me very clearly', Salisbury, 

2006: 19), avidly watching Ray Harryhausen's work and devouring horror 

B-movies from around the world, Tim Burton developed a unique personal 

style whose essence can be described as `grand effect by simple means' (of 

course, one can also call it popular). He remains ®rmly democratic in his 

use and combination of cinematic devices. In many of his ®lms he tells a 

fairly simple story, which, thanks to its straightforward sequentiality and 

uncluttered symbolism, is immediately accessible for the spectator regardless 

of his or her age or background. A Burton story is traditionally illustrated 

with beautiful pictures which are far more eloquent than any words 

can be. Films like Edward Scissorhands or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 

have at their core the childlike naivety, pain and anger aimed at the 

insensitive crowd of adults who have long ceased to see the world in fresh 

colours. Despite being clear, his message is emotionally deep. To render the 

suffering and confusion of his immature protagonists, Burton cannot use 

the elaborate sequential and combinatorial devices that are traditionally 

employed to show the complexity, multiplicity and unpredictability of the 

adult world ± intricate montage, `philosophical' long takes with a series of 

complex compositions, freeze frames, rhythmic punctuation, logical discrepancies 

between picture and sound, clashes between the extradiegetic 

and intradiegetic planes, etc. Any `grown-up' instruments would only 

obscure the message, and the purity of youthful vision would be lost. 

Instead, Burton chooses to create an impact using different methods. At 

stake are not sequential editing or the position and movement of the camera 

but the quality and detailedness of the picture and its emotional correlation 

with music. In this sense, he is far less `cinematic' than many directors. 

Burton is more of a `mise-en-sceÁne director' who has always been praised for 

his extraordinary visual sense. His grand imagery seems to be slapped onto 

narrative canvases like blobs of dark matter, like some unexplainable and 

invincible forces, which effectively belittle both protagonists and 

antagonists. Burton's marvellous, powerful visuals are not organised into 

perfect arrangements. How the shots work as a sequence (either `classic' or 

àvant-garde') has never been of much importance in his ®lms. In cinesemiotic 

terms, he is not as interested in the higher structural (syntagmatic) 

level as, for instance, such an extreme `syntagmatic' director as Alfred 

Hitchcock. Most of Burton's directorial effort is put into single frames 

(morphemes); shots at most (words) ± but not `cleverly constructed' 

sequences (sentences, paragraphs, chapters). Experimental montage and 



other forms of àuthoritative' editing (Tarkovsky's `camera montage', for 

example) are indicative of a certain desire to control the narrative as a 

whole, of the venture to achieve the solidity of the text. Burton, however, 

does not support such authoritarianism. Here is, for instance, his perception 

of storyboarding: Ì used to [storyboard] but I don't do as much anymore. 

In fact, I am getting anti-storyboard. I pretty much stopped on Beetlejuice. 

You storyboard things that need effects. I still do it to some degree. But 

certainly after the ®rst Batman, I really stopped. And now, I can't even come 

up with ± I'm getting twisted about the whole thing. There is something 

about being spontaneous and working shots out. [. . .] There's an energy and 

there's a working through things with people' (Fraga, 2005: 82). 

As for editing, it is a very melancholy process for Burton. One of his 

interviewers, David Edelstein, notes: `When I suggest to Burton that editing 

does not express him the way other parts of the process do, he muses that 

after a shoot ends, it's like breaking up with someone ± he edits in 

depression, which somehow gets incorporated into the ®lm' (Fraga, 2005: 

33). In another interview, conducted by David Breskin, Burton admits to 

not paying much attention to shot sequences: `When I look at rushes 

[unedited footage] I sometimes get chills because it reminds me of shooting. 

But editing? What can I tell you? I don't slap them together, but I'm not 

going to win any editing awards. It's okay. It's ®ne' (Fraga, 2005: 83). He is 

not, by his own admission, going to `create some kind of trendy or hot 

editing' (Fraga, 2005: 33). 

His deliberate emphasis on mise-en-sceÁne, and noticeable disregard for 

the speci®c cinematic codes, won the heart of Anton Furst, who was hired 

as the production designer for Batman (1989). Furst said in an interview 

with Alan Jones that he had never felt so naturally in tune with a director ± 

`conceptually, spiritually, visually, or artistically' (Fraga, 2005: 22). Such a 

unique connection happened because the two shared the same philosophy 

of moviemaking. Both Furst and Burton are primarily concerned with 

creating visual impact, with delivering a powerful image. The impact lies 

not in camerawork but in the basics, in the ®rst impression: `When we ®rst 

met, we both independently mentioned how sick we were of the ILM 2 

school of ®lm-making [. . .] We both agreed the best special effect we could 

ever remember seeing was the house in Psycho because it registers such a 

strong image. Impact, that's what ®lms are about ± not effects. I felt much 

better after that conversation, knowing he was totally uninterested in 

camera tricks and the clever, clever approach' (Fraga, 2005: 22). But Tim 

Burton is a `clever, clever' director in the sense that he knows how to 

capture mass audiences without `cheapening' his ®lms on the one hand, and 

2 George Lucas's brainchild, Industrial Light and Magic ± a motion picture visual effects 

company. 


how to create highly original works without resorting to mind-blowing 

complexity on the other. 

A different kind of auteur 


Despite his lack of ambition to control the narrative ± both its textual and 

cinematic constituents ± Burton is universally hailed as one of the most 

important contemporary Hollywood auteurs. Which is, in a way, paradoxical, 

because he cannot be further from an omniscient intellectual operating 

in riddles (like David Lynch) or an ace at complex, tonal montage (aÁ la Jim 

Jarmusch). 

Before trying to decide whether Tim Burton deserves the nebulous auteur 

title, let us remind ourselves what this title implies. La politique des auteurs, 

since its emergence in France in the late 1940s, and throughout its long life 

as a half-formulated concept, never managed to become a fully ¯edged 

theory. True, compared to AndreÂ Bazin and FrancËois Truffaut's applications 

of the ®lmic authorship idea, Andrew Sarris's translation of it boasted 

more shape, but still lacked a quotable de®nition. As Sarris himself 

admitted, `the auteur theory is not so much a theory as an attitude, a table 

of values that converts ®lm history into directorial autobiography' (Sarris, 

1968: 30±34). Even so, despite the lack of de®nition, the term is as popular 

as ever and its common usage is constantly growing. Any `decent' auteur is 

required to possess any (or preferably both) of the following features: 

1. Control over all or most of the processes involved in making 

afilm 

This is a slightly utopian requirement because of the so-called `noise' 

(scriptwriter, editor, producer, cameraman, composer, the actors). According 

to the British ®lm theorist Peter Wollen, the directorial factor is only 

one of the many different contributions in the moviemaking process, 

`though perhaps the one which carries the most weight' (Wollen, 1969± 

1972: 104). The scriptwriter, for instance, can be very `noisy', for his vision 

of the ®lm's style, structure and meaning can be very different from that of 

the director. A very possessive auteur, Andrey Tarkovsky argued that the 

®lm author's wholeness of vision should be placed higher than any creative 

contributions coming from the support team: 

When a writer and a director have different aesthetic starting-points, 

compromise is impossible. [. . .] When such con¯ict occurs there is only 

one way out: to transform the literary scenario into a new fabric, which 

at a certain stage in the making of the ®lm will come to be called the 

shooting script. And in the course of work on this script, the author of 

the ®lm (not of the script but of the ®lm) is entitled to turn the literary 



scenario this way or that as he wants. All that matters is that his vision 

should be whole, and that every word of the script should be dear to 

him and have passed through his own creative experience. For among 

the piles of written pages, and the actors, and the places chosen for 

location, and even the most brilliant dialogue, and the artist's sketches, 

there stands only one person: the director, and he alone, as the last 

®lter in the creative process of ®lm-making. 

(Tarkovsky, 1989: 18) 

Undeniably, the biggest `noise' of all comes from the people in charge of the 

budget (which Tarkovsky, as a young ®lm-school graduate, quickly realised 

when his ®lms began to suffer at the hands of Soviet censorship). Andrew 

Sarris recalls an old Hollywood anecdote which involves the studio head 

Samuel Goldwyn and a reporter. The latter `had the temerity to begin a 

sentence with the statement ``. . . when William Wyler made Wuthering 

Heights''. The reporter never passed beyond the premise. `Ì made Wuthering 

Heights,'' Goldwyn snapped, ``Wyler only directed it''' (Sarris, 1968: 8). 

Leaving the Hollywood studio system, or indeed any system that controls 

the ®nancial base of the ®lm, seriously narrows the gap between ùnlimited' 

and `limited' control over the project. 

The intrinsic complexity of the ®lmmaking process, in that it involves 

various people at different levels, makes it dif®cult to attain the goal of 

àbsolute control'. Authorship can only be approximate; it can only be 

shared ± to a different degree in each individual case, of course ± because 

`writers, actors, producers and technicians challenge [the director] at every 

turn' (Sarris, 1968: 12). 

2. A distinct `voice' (recurrent themes, motifs, characters, 

techniques, stylistic features) 

There is no doubt that Tim Burton has a unique cinematographic style. À 

distinct voice' sounds ambitious, but this is much easier to achieve than the 

`sole authorship' prerequisite. The British ®lm scholar Geoffrey Novel- 

Smith argued that recognisable motifs are one essential corollary of the 

auteur theory: `The pattern formed by these motifs . . . is what gives an 

author's work its particular structure, both de®ning it internally and distinguishing 

one body of work from another (Caughie, 1981: 137). 

Just like any work of art, a ®lm should be original, recognisable and have 

an ìdenti®able' maker's mark ìn the corner'. Originality, the covetable 

distinct style, can be further subdivided into formal (montage, mise-ensceÁne, 

camera angles, punctuation, sequential organisation of the narrative, 

etc.) and thematic. Like in a literary text, the two, the form and the content, 

intertwine and support each other. Quite often, ®lm critics seem to equate 

òriginality' with formal complexity. Tricks like `hot editing' (Burton's 



term), unusual POV (think of the `soup's point of view' from Guy Ritchie's 

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), and convoluted narratives (the 

multi-layered, twisted, nightmarish plot in Lynch's Mulholland Drive is a 

good example) are traditionally seen as part of the auteur culture and 

intellectual moviemaking. Technical virtuosity, stubbornness and a certain 

inescapable elitism are traditionally associated with the concept of directorial 

àutership'. Also, there is always a danger that the desire to èxpress 

oneself entirely in a ®lm' is interpreted as a sign of egotism and vanity, the 

desire to `play God' and be the centre of attention. 

True, it would not be easy to squeeze Tim Burton into any of the auteur 

stereotypes. As a director, he is an oxymoron, or, as Le Blanc and Odell put 

it, à Hollywood contradiction' (2005: 11). Whatever aspect of his creative 

life you examine, there is always a paradox lurking in the background. 

Consider, for instance, the issue of unlimited control over one's work. On 

the surface of it, Burton is ®rmly rooted in the studio system. His career 

began at Disney, where he found himself after the California Institute of the 

Arts, a training school created by Walt Disney in the 1960s. Eight of 

his ®lms, including Batman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney 

Todd, were produced by Warner Brothers; Edward Scissorhands was 

®nanced by Twentieth-Century Fox, and Big Fish is a Columbia Pictures 

production. At the same time, he has always had a tempestuous relationship 

with the studio system, aiming to preserve his unique vision while keeping to 

the studio's budget. He regularly sounds disdainful when he speaks of his 

experience of dealing with the studio system, the phrase `F**k your system' 

being one of the most expressive of his opinions (Fraga, 2005: 57). 

And from the very start the fateful `system' intermittently hindered and 

pushed forward Burton's directorial career. He considered himself lucky to 

be picked by the Disney Review Board out of the crowd of ambitious 

contenders at Cal Arts, but soon realised that `the dream ticket' would only 

lead him to a dead-end: `Disney and I were a bad mix [. . .] they want you to 

be an artist, but at the same time they want you to be a zombie factory 

worker and have no personality. It takes a very special person to make 

those two sides of your brain coexist' (Salisbury, 2006: 9±10). He found the 

atmosphere so sti¯ing and ànti-auteur' that he eventually left the studio in 

the middle of the 1980s after Frankenweenie, his black and white short, was 

deemed by Disney too `dark' for children's audiences (it was subsequently 

shelved until 1992). 

Tim Burton's instinctive ability to appeal to the mass audience can easily 

be confused with an acute sense for marketable cinematic products. It is 

obvious that the studio system, despite its notorious habit of preferring 

successful entrepreneurs to creative recluses, has successfully exploited 

Burton's Gothic fantasies ± which happen to sell well. Having watched so 

many horror ®lms as a child, and consequently having absorbed all the 

basic principles of a marketable mass movie ± simpli®ed narrative, big 



drama, emotional symbolism, hyperbolised visuals, high stylisation, rich 

arti®ciality of sets, costumes and make-up ± Burton undoubtedly gained a 

sharp sense of `product' that would appeal to a mass audience (something 

that is quite unusual in an auteur aspirant). And anyway, Burton is known 

as a director who is prepared to ®ght for his creative vision. He chose 

Johnny Depp over Tom Cruise as Edward Scissorhands at a time when 

Depp was no more than a teen `novelty idol' and Cruise was already a 

con®rmed superstar. Depp was eventually given the role ± apparently after 

much ®ghting and debate on the part of the director. The actor could not 

believe his ears when his agent rang him weeks after the initial meeting with 

Burton: Ì put the phone down and mumbled those words to myself. And 

then mumbled them to anyone I came in contact with. I couldn't f**king 

believe it. He was willing to risk everything on me in the role. Headbutting 

the studio's wishes, hopes and dreams for a big star with established boxof®ce 

draw, he chose me' (Salisbury, 2006: xi). Burton's side of the story 

looked like this: 

They are always saying, here is a list of ®ve people who are box-of®ce, 

and three of them are Tom Cruise. I've learned to be open at the initial 

stage and talk to people. He certainly wasn't my ideal, but I talked to 

him. He was interesting, but I think it worked out for the best. A lot of 

questions came up ± I don't really recall the speci®cs ± but at the end 

of the meeting I did feel like, and even probably said to him, Ìt's nice 

to have a lot of questions about the character, but you either do it or 

you don't do it' 

(Salisbury, 2000: 91) 

Burton feels justi®ed in arguing with studio executives over `details' like the 

choice of actors and ®lm endings ± but not like some touchy, capricious 

auteur with a systematic vision aÁ la Adam Kesher in Mulholland Drive. 

Burton, in his elated stubbornness, resembles a child prophet who believes 

that he has seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary, and is now adamant that 

the visitation was absolutely genuine. Ìf Beetlejuice turns out to be 

successful,' he said in one of his early interviews, Ì will be so happy, and so 

perversely happy. I'm for anything that subverts what the studio thinks you 

have to do' (Fraga, 2005: 15). 

This amazing obstinacy, the force that bends even the pillars of the studio 

system, made the ®lm critic Jonathan Romney label him as `Hollywood's 

pet maladjusted adolescent' (Woods, 2002: 170). The àdolescent', however, 

knows how to deal with those sensible, reasonable adults: 

. . . they don't know what you go through with studio people and 

executives, and they take their cue a lot from critics, and the feeling is 



that `Tim can't tell a story out of a paper bag'. [. . .] And every time, 

when they're developing a script and you're talking to the studio and 

you have these stupid meetings with them, I can say that if there is a 

problem with the movie it is nothing that you discussed. [. . .] And 

Beetlejuice was kind of the one movie that gave me, again, that feeling 

of humanity, that F**k Everybody! That made me feel very good, that 

the audience didn't need a certain kind of thing. Movies can be 

different things! Wouldn't it be great if the world allowed David 

Cronenberg to do his thing and people could tell the difference! And 

criticism would be on the whole other level! And the world be on the 

whole other level! 

(Fraga, 2005: 57) 

`The difference', one might assume, lies in the amount of `noise' that 

gradually creeps into the ®lm in the process of its evolution from the initial 

concept to the ®nal product. All the while, and rather contrastingly, Burton 

has respect for the people who hand out the cash, and willingly acknowledges 

the ®nancial responsibility for his creations: Ì've never taken the 

attitude of the artiste, who says I don't care about anything, I'm just 

making my movie. I try to be true to myself and do only what I can do, 

because if I veer from that everybody's in trouble. And when there is a large 

amount of money involved, I attempt, without pretending to know what 

audiences are all about, to try and do something that people would like to 

see, without going too crazy' (Woods, 2002: 51). Tim Burton is not a purist; 

he had always had an eye on the commercial side of the movie business. In 

some of his interviews he expressed rather anti-auteurish opinions: Ì care 

about money, which is why I get so intense when these people are on my 

case saying I don't make commercial movies, because I've always felt very 

responsible to the people who put up the money. It's not like you're doing a 

painting. There is a large amount of money involved, even if you're doing a 

low-budget movie, so I don't want to waste it (Salisbury, 2006: 51). It is his 

attempt to achieve the `golden middle', the ideal position in the triangle 

consisting of the director, the studio and the audience, that makes him 

simultaneously accessible and, surprisingly, sophisticated. 

Burton's visual style is extremely recognisable despite the fact that he does 

not harbour ambitions to produce avant-garde works and èxplore new 

artistic territories'. Most of his creative efforts seem to be aimed at the 

elements that are not exclusive to cinema, or, to use Christian Metz's term, 

at `non-speci®c cinematic codes' (for instance, soundtrack and codes of 

visual iconicity shared with painting) (Metz, 1974: 224±235). Burton is at his 

most con®dent with the components that traditionally determine `the main 

impression', or the general atmosphere of a ®lm: visual-iconic elements, 

lighting, music and story (but not plot). At the same time, he does not 

worship speci®cally cinematic properties such as sequentiality, movement of 



the image (camera) and movement in the image (actors). 3 The fact that 

the `picture' moves is an additional bene®t rather than the main property 

of Burton's creative product ± the movement allows him to tell a story, 

without foregrounding itself as a stylistic element. Much of his effort goes 

into the initial impression from the shot, hence the heightened attention 

to the static elements of the mise-en-sceÁne (the ones which cinema shares 

with photography): setting, decorations, texture, colours, lighting, framing, 

make-up and costumes. They make Burton's works highly atmospheric. His 

relative neglect of camera movement and editing gives his ®lms a charming 

imprecision ± which is perfect for Burton's artistic purposes as this kind of 

background emphasises the magni®cent, luminous symbolism of his ®lms. 

Burton's status in Hollywood is so ambiguous that some critics have 

altogether grouped his works with contemporary action movies, confusing 

his lack of narrative and stylistic precision with an interest in the action 

aspect of the ®lm. Alison McMahan, in a book entitled The Films of Tim 

Burton, coins the term pataphysical ®lm, and irrevocably attributes Burton's 

style to this genre. In her view, all pataphysical ®lms have in common the 

following features: 

· An alternative narrative logic 

· Use of special effects in a blatant way 

· Thin plots and thinly drawn characters, `because the narrative relies 

more on intertextual, nondiegetic references'. 

(McMahan, 2005: 3) 

Examples of such movies include, for instance, Van Helsing (2004) and 

Hulk (2003). It appears that the movies labelled pataphysical by Alison 

McMahan are predominantly commercial. They privilege action over 

narrative and quite blatantly serve as a recycling factory for anything 

previously done in cinema, both stylistically and textually, mixing high and 

low, old and new; randomly combining genres, plots and recycled famous 

sequences from other ®lms. For instance, the seven-minute sequence at the 

beginning of Van Helsing, incorporating segments from over 70 years of 

Draculas and Frankensteins, is not just an ironic statement, a reference that 

`got out of control'. It is ± decidedly ± an integral part of the movie. 

McMahan places the roots of this genre in the days of early cinema and 

animation, Jules Levy's Les Art IncoheÂrents, and in the visual and 

ideological legacy of Surrealism. She argues that the eccentric works of the 

®rst animator, the French science teacher Emile Reynaud, 4 with their 

¯uidity of transformations, in¯uenced contemporary pataphysical ®lms. 

3 The last two are Metz's terms (Metz, 1974: 232). 

4 The director of Fantasmagorie (1908), The Hasher's Delirium (1910), etc. 



The inherited traits include, in McMahan's view, dependence on èxcessive' 

special effects (which bring with them à change in narration and a ¯attening 

of the emotional aspects of the characters'), non-realistic narrative, and 

tongue-in-cheek attitude (McMahan, 2005: 15). She also insists that these 

®lms are not meaningless; rather, they `have come to mean differently, to 

mean in new ways' (2005: 3). Unfortunately, the author does not explain 

what these news ways of meaning are, or what exactly constitutes `the 

alternative narrative logic' which the `pataphysical ®lms' appear to follow. 

Films like Hulk, Van Helsing, Brothers Grimm and The Matrix are 

blatantly lowbrow, populist and allusive to the point of non-stop recycling. 

Being fast-paced and powerfully visual, they are openly aimed at the 

spectator with a short attention span. Their creators deliberately macerate, 

mix and match other ®lms and cinematic traditions in order to make the 

product more digestible and super®cially attractive. People who make them 

know that they are producing a nakedly commercial product. 

McMahan's belief that Burton's oeuvre belongs to the bulk of the `pataphysical 

style' is understandable. His ®lms contain some formal attributes 

of the aforementioned group, such as schematic plots and characters, 

inter®lmic references and allusions, as well as ìn your face' special effects 

(of which the freakish, DIY effects from Beetlejuice are a good example). 

Burton, a self-confessed fan of classic horror movies, is especially reliant on 

allusions: `Because I never read, my fairy tales were probably those monster 

movies. [. . .] I mean, fairy tales are extremely violent and extremely symbolic 

and disturbing, probably even more so than Frankenstein and stuff 

like that, which are kind of mythic and perceived as fairy-tale like' 

(Salisbury, 2000: 3). True, Frankenstein, in James Whale's realisation, was 

an important source of inspiration for Burton. Frankenweenie (1984) is 

bursting with direct references to both Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of 

Frankenstein (1935), almost to the point of direct translation of Whale's 

vision into the children's pet story, in which Boris Karloff is replaced with a 

little monster dog, who dies but gets `resurrected' by a boy genius. Some 

®lmic allusions that Burton inserts into his ®lms are smaller and less 

obvious. For instance, the slowly melting dolls' heads in Charlie and the 

Chocolate Factory (2005) is a tribute to AndreÂ de Toth's The House of Wax 

(1953) with Vincent Price. 

The misunderstood introverted punk Edward Scissorhands is an original 

creation ± unlike many of his other powerful motifs and characters. In fact, 

it appears that only the characters who directly re¯ect Burton's own 

psychology ± like Vincent and Edward ± are entirely original. The rest are 

borrowed from a variety of literary and cinematic sources and can be traced 

to their roots in popular culture and literature. The popular borrowings 

include, for instance, the superhero Batman, the brainy green Martians 

from Mars Attacks!, the demon barber Sweeney Todd, who made his debut 

in 1846 in the penny dreadful series entitled The String of Pearls: A 



Romance, and Ed Wood's circus of freaks and ghouls, including Bela 

Lugosi and Vampyra. Burton's (undeniably mediated) literary in¯uences, 

are, too, many and diverse: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its numerous 

cinematic reworkings; Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; 

Daniel Wallace's Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions; Roald Dahl's 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes; and 

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. 

Knowing that Tim Burton likes to reuse aspects of old ®lms, can we 

really tell the difference between `pataphysical' references and ìmportant' 

references? Or, in other words, can one employ heaps of popular allusions 

in a meaningful manner? 

Action, symbol, introspection 

My argument is that associating Burton's works with commercial, fastpaced, 

action-packed ®lms steeped with music-clip-like montage and 

random narrative citations, would be a mistake. The `pop' nature of 

Burton's ®lms is more of a lucky by-product of his creativity than an 

intended outcome. First of all, he is not an action director ± both objectively 

and self-confessedly ± and hence cannot be compared to Stephen 

Sommers, Roland Emmerich, James Cameron or the Wachowski brothers. 

His action sequences in Batman and Planet of the Apes are limp, clumsy and 

lacking in agility. Ì've seen better action in my day' is Burton's view of his 

own action-making skills (Fraga, 2005: 78). Ever the true nonconformist, he 

declares: Ìf you want it to be a James Cameron movie then get James 

Cameron to do it. Me directing action is a joke; I don't like guns. I hear a 

gunshot and I close my eyes' (Salisbury, 2006: 114). 

Still, it would be unfair to expect a perfect handling of fast sequences 

from a predominantly introspective director. The action Burton is trying to 

express is more of a psychological than a `real' phenomenon. Even on the 

visual level, the `quest' motif in his ®lms, along with its principal battles and 

challenges, lacks the `physicality', brutality and (pseudo)realism of traditional 

action movies. It is the ìnner', not the òuter' movement that Burton 

is trying to convey. Unlike the `pataphysical' ®lms Alison McMahan 

recalls, Burton's works are deemed to be slower, inward-looking and far 

more personal. All the pop-cinematic allusions he gathers in his ®lms ± be it 

the ragged Frankenstein monster, Ed Wood's aluminium tin ¯ying saucers 

or even the melting heads of wax dolls ± are linked, via different modes of 

projection, to the childhood feelings of dejection, failure to communicate, 

and alienation from one's surroundings. The monstrous, the Gothic and the 

surreal are not, for Burton, simply effective, tried-and-tested vehicles for 

producing an entertaining narrative. They are far more than communication 

aids and adequate means of expression. Burton may be groping for 



words in interviews, but his visual creations, his Gothic symbols, possess 

remarkable depth, clarity and precision. 

In interviews he also admits to having trouble creating a coherent 

cinematic narrative. He explains why he persistently `sacri®ces' the narrative 

for the sake of the visuals. Lack of delineation, de®nition and linguistic 

detailedness is Burton's way of ensuring that his ®lms remain democratic 

and accessible: 

I guess it must be the way my brain works, because the ®rst Batman 

was probably my most concentrated effort to tell a linear story, and I 

realise that it's like a joke. [. . .] In any of my movies the narrative is the 

worst thing you've ever seen, and that's constant. [. . .] Do Fellini 

movies have a strong narrative drive? I love movies where I make up 

my own idea about them. [. . .] Everybody is different, so things are 

going to affect people differently. So why not have your own opinions, 

have different levels of things you can ®nd if you want them, however 

deeply you want to go. That's why I like Roman Polanski's movies, like 

The Tenant. I've felt like that, I've lived it, I know what that's like. Or 

Repulsion, I know that feeling, I understand it. [. . .] You just connect. 

It may not be something that anybody else connects with, but it's like I 

get that, I understand that feeling. I will always ®ght that literal 

impulse to lay everything directly in front of you. I just hate it. 

Some people are really good at narrative and some people are really 

good at action. I'm not that sort of person. So, if I'm going to do 

something, just let me do my thing and hope for the best. If you don't 

want me to do it, then just don't have me do it. But if I do it, don't 

make me conform. 

(Salisbury, 2006: 114) 

The gaps are to be ®lled with what Burton calls `the feeling', and what 

Tarkovsky describes as `something amorphous, vague, with no skeleton 

or schema. Like a cloud' (Tarkovsky, 1989: 23). Throughout his book 

Tarkovsky states that he prefers freedom of expression to any theories, 

formulas, schemas or threadbare tricks. Like Burton, he does not normally 

describe his works in technical terms, attempting instead to paint à feeling'. 

Narrative causality, in Tarkovsky's view, should be replaced with `poetic 

articulation': `There are some aspects of human life that can only be faithfully 

represented through poetry. But this is where directors very often try to 

use clumsy, conventional gimmickry instead of poetic logic. I'm thinking of 

illusionism and extraordinary effects involved in dreams, memories and 

fantasies. All too often ®lm dreams are made into a collection of oldfashioned 

®lmic tricks, and cease to be a phenomenon of life' (2000: 30). 

For Tim Burton, too, the poetry of the image comes ®rst. This `symbolic' 

approach seems to be dictated by the speci®cs of his creativity. By his own 



admission, his creative process is more intuitive than intellectual: Ì don't 

trust my intellect as much, because it's kind of schizy,' Burton admits, Ì 

feel more grounded going with a feeling' (Woods, 2002: 41). He starts with 

a vague image, and goes on to create a numinous symbol which often has 

personal signi®cance for him, such as a dishevelled boy with scissors instead 

of hands, a rugged madman who calls himself a `bio-exorcist', a menacing 

urban panorama, a spooky countryside landscape. The image of Edward 

Scissorhands, for instance, `came subconsciously and was linked to a character 

who wants to touch but can't; who was both creative and destructive 

...Itwasvery much linked to a feeling' (Salisbury, 2006: 87). 

However, Burton's habit of reworking existing narratives does not 

indicate a lack of creativity or de®ciency of imagination. It is true that he 

prefers to work with popular myths, but gives them a new visual interpretation. 

His versions of pre-existent symbols ± the Joker, Batman, Willy 

Wonka, Topps Cards Martians, talking apes, Sweeney Todd ± if they do 

not always outshine the original, are nevertheless instantly recognisable and 

visually striking. Moreover, the distinctiveness and numinosity of his 

symbols compensate for the inadequacy of technical and narrative elements. 

With Edward Scissorhands for a central character, one cannot 

lament the absence of a clever rhythmic pattern, inventively striking juxtapositions 

or intriguingly non-linear narrative. However eloquent and 

beautiful these tricks can be, Tim Burton simply does not need them to get 

his message across. When he wants to tell a story ± his story ± he does not 

re®ne it until it becomes a shiny, robotic work of art. He leaves it in a 

vaguely raw, half-unconscious (his hallmark), twilight state, devoid of the 

smoothness of the classic narrative ®lm on the one hand, and the sharp 

precision of thought which is so typical of intellectual ®lmmaking on the 

other. There is enough power in Edward to charge the ®lm with energy and 

poignancy. The creature with scissors is multi-layered and complex enough 

as a symbol to invite multiple, and con¯icting, interpretations. 

To sum up the ideas discussed on the previous pages ± Burton looks as 

unnatural in the `highbrow' corner as he does among the gang of `meaningless 

action' directors. All the while, his style is unique and easily recognisable, 

with repeating visual and narrative patterns. He tends to neglect the 

textual aspect of ®lm; and in doing this, he places `the image' higher than 

`the word'. Consequently, the cinematic, `moving' narrative suffers alongside 

the textual aspect (storyline, dialogues, extradiegetic voices). In addition, 

he predominantly operates with simple, myth-like compositions. His 

®lms foreground `bigger' symbolism at the expense of syntactic intricacy 

and diegetic ploys, and gravitate towards intense and vivid, but less 

detailed, models and blocks. This inevitably steers Burton's creative vision 

towards the realm of the fantastic, where such means of expression are 

appropriate, while almost totally neglecting realistic genres. Burton certainly 

feels àt home' with a number of traditionally popular genres such as 


science ®ction, fantasy, horror, myth and mystery, and freely uses dark and 

Gothic imagery. 

His persistent use of simpli®ed mythological frames does not mean, 

however, that he misses out on psychological complexity. The psychological 

depth of Burton's ®lms is as intense as that of a S Ï vankmajer or Lynch ± but 

his is the archetypal insight of a good fairy tale. Moreover, the lucidity of 

his narratives allows the audience to access this psychological content 

quicker, and appreciate it more fully. Far from being plain, downmarket 

and populist, Burton's narratives are uncluttered, powerful and topical. 

Neither does he seem to care whether his material is original, and to what 

degree. His interpretations, however, are undoubtedly original and ± what 

is more important ± personal. Whatever images he utilises ± be it the 

Frankenstein monster in the form of a little dog, Dracula in the guise of 

drug-dependent Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, or the Penguin man who, in this 

version, behaves like a mistreated child ± the director always moulds them 

into a story about a misunderstood, lonely outcast; or at least links them to 

such a story. 

People who interview Tim Burton often notice his clumsiness, his introversion 

and his inability to express himself clearly and coherently. His 

creativity clearly visual and not linguistic, he often looks at a loss when 

trying to explain to journalists why and how he did a certain thing in his 

®lm. And journalists, usually being watchful and perceptive, notice his 

communication weaknesses immediately. One of his interviewers, David 

Edelstein, wrote: `To quote him is not to get him right; you miss the air of 

stoned melancholy, the spastically gesticulating hands and the sentences 

that stop and restart and that you have to complete for him' (Fraga, 2005: 

32). If Tim Burton is to be labelled an auteur, then he is the àuteur of the 

symbol'. 

Tim Burton in context 


It is interesting to compare Burton's handling of abstract imagery with the 

work of other directors who have also depicted the world of the unconscious 

in symbolic language. Symbolic cinema is not necessarily non-realistic 

cinema ± one can make a ®lm based on a spiritual, miraculous or supernatural 

idea, but use everyday images and objective representation techniques 

to express it. Or, as the French ®lm theorist AndreÂ Bazin wrote, 

`realism . . . is to be de®ned not in terms of ends but of means' (Bazin, 1971/ 

II: 87). 

Let us take a look at Andrey Tarkovsky. A proponent of dream-like, 

iconic imagery, and advocate of narrative impressionism (his ®lms are 

`poetically structured' rather than linear), Tarkovsky nevertheless considered 

`the real world' the only possible visual and emotional base for a 

®lm. In his view, realistic details, represented in a symbolic way, are the 



most suitable tools for truthful re¯ection of the inner world. For this 

purpose his level of detail is very high: `To be faithful to life, intrinsically 

truthful, a work has for me to be at once an exact factual account and a 

true communication of feelings' (Tarkovsky, 1989: 23). Tarkovsky's symbols 

are not expressionistic, or grotesque, or make-believe; his underwater 

life is amazingly realistic, and even the death of the horse in Andrey Rublev 

± quite horrifyingly ± happens in real time and is captured by the camera. 

Such abundance of naturalism is unusual for abstract imagery, because, at 

this level of archetypal depth, symbols usually become schematic and 

imprecise. There exists a dark, mesmerising gap between the precision of 

Tarkovsky's symbols, and the fathomless philosophical abstractness which 

they represent. Even the most blurred and metaphysical of his plotlines are 

built from `real-life' bricks: a horse, a burning candle, an empty room. All 

this leaves an impression of paranoia and danger ± the spectator cannot for 

a second doubt that the picture on screen is `genuine' ± but the real world 

portrayed is haunted, murky and uncontrollable. Tarkovsky does not draw 

the line between the real and the psychic life; there is no `safe distance' 

between the ®lm and the audience. His illusions, and his symbols, are 

extremely factual. 

Burton, by contrast, steers clear of any concrete imagery. The viewer gets 

his distance, which allows him to participate safely in the projection/ 

introjection exchange. The blood in his ®lms is `painted' in the most 

unnatural hues of red which can never be mistaken for the real thing. The 

spectator can safely absorb the ®lm's contents and apply them to their own 

life ± in other words, they will `become the main character', and ®ll the 

character with their personal qualities. At the same time, the audience can 

leave the enchanted world at any moment. In order to stay `safe' and 

`controllable', the on-screen universe has to be narratively schematic and 

visually arti®cial while at the same time remaining psychologically accurate. 

This is exactly what Burton manages to achieve in his ®lms. He shares with 

Tarkovsky the desire to `portray' a feeling, an emotion, an unconscious, 

dream-like state ± hence the heightened attention to mise-en-sceÁne. But 

unlike Tarkovsky, his images are far more distorted and grotesque; they are, 

very clearly, hyperboles ± both visually and narratively. His sets are highly 

stylised ± Sweeney Todd, for instance, was shot on set and not on location, 

because the director wanted to achieve a fairy tale London, not a real 

London (DVD2/`Sweeney's London'). The blades of Edward Scissorhands 

may look sharp and physically dangerous, but his razor blades are a ®gurative 

device, standing for inability to communicate, rather than an imagemaking 

recommendation for your average introverted±rebellious teenager. 

Genre-wise, Burton's ®lms are close to the German expressionist aesthetic, 

with their distortion of reality, high degree of stylisation, extensive use of 

chiaroscuro, emphasis on metaphor and symbol, and the pictorial composition 

of their stock imagery, which was achieved by `violence to the 



plastics of the image by way of sets and lighting' (Bazin, 1971/I: 26). Burton's 

characters and mise-en-sceÁne are also pictorial and plastic-expressionist, 

similar to those created by Friedrich Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922), Robert 

Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1921) and Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927). 

German cinematic expressionism can be analysed in terms of critical 

re¯ection of the political and social reality in Europe in the 1920s. Caligari, 

for example, was originally devised as a parable of ùnchecked authoritarianism 

following the cataclysm of war' (Skal, 1993: 41). In the `negative 

allegorical' way typical of the Gothic mode in general, the ®lms investigated 

the psychology of the crowd and the dangerous possibilities of controlling 

the human mind ± hence the themes of authoritarianism, obsession, madness, 

hypnosis, trance and frenzy. The `distorted' `visible reality' was built of 

grotesque images and displayed erratic composition; at the same time, the 

psychological reality was reproduced as terrifyingly believable. In other 

words, `the inner' distorted `the outer', and no naturalistic means could have 

been employed in place of angular sets, heavy shadows and contrast lighting 

to render the themes of the collective shadow, conservative nationalism, 

political power and authoritative control. Expressionists' diminished interest 

in the plot (which is often erratic and directionless) can be explained by the 

more urgent necessity to tell the `psychological story', to express the emotional 

rather than the narrative aspect of the idea. 

Similarly, in Tim Burton's oeuvre, the psycho-visual aspect comes into 

con¯ict with the narrative structure, and especially with his ®lms' textual 

plane. AndreÂ Bazin argues that `the expressionist heresy came to an end 

after the arrival of sound' because `the sound image, far less ¯exible than 

the visual image, would carry montage in the direction of realism, increasingly 

eliminating both plastic expressionism and the symbolic relation 

between images' (Bazin, 1971/II: 26; 1971/I: 33). In Burton's ®lms, out of all 

possible sound accompaniments, music (both extradiegetic and intradiegetic) 

plays a far more important part, and aids in the expression of the 

major idea, than would any dialogue, albeit masterfully written. Without 

Danny Elfman's music, which in itself is a powerful, melodramatic commentary 

to any moving image, neither Edward Scissorhands nor Batman 

Returns would have had the trademark Burtonian emotional impact on the 

audience. Interestingly enough, Burton began experimenting with musicals 

(James and the Giant Peach, 1996, The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993) 

early in his career, and is now increasingly moving towards the musical 

genre, of which Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Sweeney Todd 

(2007) are good examples. Joining the image with the musical accompaniment 

is a trusted method of decreasing the pressure on the linguistic and 

narrative planes of the ®lm, while also an ef®cient way of increasing its 

emotional±expressive potential. 

Plastic expressionism and symbolic relations between images are the 

de®ning features of Tim Burton's ®lms. His symbols are not covered with a 



veil of realism ± on the contrary, their structure and function are always 

accessible, non-elitist and interpretable. The non-realistic modes (the fantastic, 

the uncanny and the marvellous, to use Tzvetan Todorov's terminology), 

however, can be very complex too ± in their own way. Juxtaposed 

with the reality plane (think of the cinematic and ®ctional magical realism) 5 , 

instead of `mythologising' and simplifying the narrative, they make it more 

intricate. The non-realistic plane of a magical-realist narrative sequence 

points at the convergences and divergences between the psychological and 

the real, and at the discrepancies between the inner and the outer worlds. 

Magical realism contains hidden niches which can be occupied by political 

statements, its `magical' part serving as a safe place for political allegories. 

Magic can be presented in the narrative às a cultural corrective, requiring 

readers to scrutinize accepted realistic conventions of causality, materiality, 

motivation' (Faris and Zamora, 1995: 3). 

Splitting the narrative into two planes is, by all means, a very attractive 

and effective stylistic device; it èxternalises' the character's psychic life, 

displays the dialectical intricacies of human relationships and even the 

transitoriness and subjectivity of commonly accepted, and seemingly `real', 

discourses. While most of Burton's ®lms, to some extent, concern the clash 

between the real and the psychological, he used magical realism to its 

maximum potential only once ± in Big Fish (2003), which boasts a rather 

convoluted storyline. 

By his own admission, Burton is totally at sea with narrative sequences, 

especially of such an elaborate kind. It is also unusual for him to employ 

novels as canvases for his vision. A good, and ornate, storyline is more of a 

Steven Spielberg thing, so it is not surprising that Spielberg was also 

interested in making The Big Fish (Le Blanc and Odell, 2005: 121). It is far 

more curious that Burton chose it as working material for his next ®lm, for, 

although thematically the story lies within Burton's usual pool of archetypal 

schemata (death of the father, hero myth, a bewitching anima), stylistically it 

differs from the bulk of his work. The biggest observable difference is the 

presence of the perceivable `reality plane' in Big Fish. Le Blanc and Odell 

note that the ®lm, because of its `grounding in the real world, and not the 

idealised pastel pseudo-1950s of Edward Scissorhands or the imposing 

futuristic megapolis of Batman', feels `strangely dissociated' (2005: 124). 

Such narrative complexity is rather untypical for Burton and can be credited 

to the fact that it had pre-existed as a fully ¯edged magical realist novel. 

Although a story about a man's ®nal reconciliation with his father may be 

a good way of expressing existential angst, Burton seems to be more at 

home with purely grotesque structures: fairy tales (Edward Scissorhands, 

5 Cinematic examples: Being John Malkovich (1999), Pan's Labyrinth (2006); literary examples: 

Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita (1928±1940), The Magus (1966) by John Fowles. 


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland); comics (Batman); 

`penny dreadfuls' cum musicals (Sweeney Todd); highly symbolic antiutopias 

(Planet of the Apes); and classic Gothic hits refracted through the 

prism of B-cinema (the Frankenstein monster, Poe's Raven). One might 

argue that grotesque and mythological genres are schematic (which made 

them so popular with `basic' formalists like Vladimir Propp, archetypal 

formalists like Joseph Campbell or interpretative archetypalists like 

Northrop Frye). For Burton, however, allegorical genres are the main, 

and the most effective, way of sublimating his personal material. He 

explains his choice (with total disregard for academic terminology): 

Because I never read, my fairy tales were probably those monster 

movies. To me, they're fairly similar. I mean, fairy tales are extremely 

violent and extremely symbolic and disturbing, probably even more so 

than Frankenstein and stuff like that, which are kind of mythic and 

perceived as fairy-tale-like. [. . .] Growing up, I guess, it was a reaction 

against a very puritanical, bureaucratic, ®fties nuclear family environment 

± me resisting seeing things laid out, seeing things exactly as they 

were. That's why I've always liked the idea of fairy tales or folk tales, 

because they're symbolic of something else. There's a foundation to 

them, but there's more besides, they're open to interpretation. I always 

liked that, seeing things and just having your own idea about them. 

(Salisbury, 2006: 3) 

It is interesting that Burton's choice of styles and methods is not dictated by 

their aesthetic qualities, but is based on an assumption which you do not 

often hear from an auteur: ®lms can be ideologically and structurally loose, 

and should generally invite interpretative pluralism. This position is similar 

to that of another advocate of open interpretation, vague symbolism and 

loose structures, Andrey Tarkovsky, who held the opinion that the audience 

was entitled to `. . . the opportunity to live through what is happening 

on the screen as if it were his own life, to take over, as deeply personal as 

his own, the experience imprinted in time upon the screen, relating his own 

life to what is being shown' (Tarkovsky, 1989: 183). Unlike Tarkovsky, 

however, who chose a complex way of expressing the symbolic with realistic 

means, Burton is formally simple, schematic, plush and essentially `pop', 

which allows him to attract and retain a much bigger fan base than an 

average circle of auteur connoisseurs. 

Ways of analysing the symbol 


It is for this reason, and taking into consideration the `plastic' and allegorical 

character of Burton's ®lms, that I have chosen Jungian analytical 

psychology as my principal interpretative tool. I picked it from a highly 



competitive pool of valid and astute methodologies because, in my view, it 

perfectly suits the layout and meaning of Burton's works, his creative 

habits, as well as his sublimation stimuli. 

Tim Burton is an essentially archetypal director in the sense that he 

works with basic mythological motifs. The principal themes of his ®lms, 

especially the father±son con¯ict, call for a psychoanalytic approach. As a 

practising psychotherapist and ìnterpreter of dreams', Jung was more 

interested in the syntagmatic realisation of mythological structures than 

their history, formal properties or comparative possibilities. My choice of 

Jung over Freud and the post-Freudians is a matter of their different 

approaches to the treatment of symbols ± whether in dreams or in the 

arts. Bearing in mind Burton's anti-linguistic (or alinguistic) tendencies, 

Freudian, Lacanian and post-Freudian theories are less applicable because 

they place the linguistic above the visual. As Steven Walker observes, `By 

emphasising the image over the word, Jungian psychology differentiates 

itself radically from Freudian, Lacanian and other psychologies that stress 

the task of interpreting the language of the unconscious' (Walker, 2002: 3). 

Don Fredericksen draws attention to another aspect of the same problem: 

Freud's `semiotic' (possibility of exact interpretation) and Jung's 

`symbolic' attitude (ampli®cation, or deferred interpretation) to the creative 

and dream-imagery. Jung does not see the unconscious as being linguistically 

structured, hence his rejection of semiotics in favour of ampli®cation. 

Jung writes in Psychological Types: 

The concept of symbol should in my view be strictly distinguished from 

that of sign. Symbolic and semiotic meanings are entirely different 

things ...Asymbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is 

the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown 

fact, which is nonetheless known to exist or is postulated as existing . . . 

Every view which interprets the symbolic expression as an analogue or 

an abbreviated designation for a known thing is semiotic. [. . .] The 

symbol is alive only so long as it is pregnant with meaning. But once its 

meaning has been born out of it, once that expression is found that 

formulated the thing sought, expected, or divined even better than the 

hitherto accepted symbol, then the symbol is dead, i.e., it possesses only 

an historical signi®cance ...Anexpression that stands for a known 

thing remains a mere sign and not a symbol. It is, therefore, quite 

impossible to create a living symbol, i.e., one that is pregnant with 

meaning, from known associations. 

(Jung, 1971: CW6: paras. 814±818) 

Thus, a symbol is a relative and ìmmediate' thing, rather than a permanent, 

ready-made set of meanings. In a symbol, the relationship between the 



signi®er and the signi®ed is, indeed, highly arbitrary. Drawing upon Jung's 

democratic position of ànti-exactness', Don Fredericksen argues: 

We must understand that Jung's distinction between sign and symbol 

ultimately elaborates two distinct modes of apprehending and explaining 

the psyche and its products ± not just two distinct psychologies but 

two distinct ontologies and philosophies of value. 

This point is succinctly illustrated by Jung and Freud's differing 

explanations of, and attitudes toward, incest fantasy and symbolism. 

Freud interpreted the incest fantasy concretely. [. . .] Freud labels the 

distorted or disguised expressions of the incest wish `symbols', incorrectly 

so according to Jung. For the latter, Freud's `symbols' are in fact 

signs, standing for the putatively known, albeit repressed, desire of the 

patient to have physical intimacy with a parent. Their meaning can be 

completely explained by Freudian analytic procedures that reduce them 

to their underlying cause. 

(Hauke and Alister, 2005: 19) 

For Jung, the symbol is always bigger than the sum of the dreamer's (or the 

author's) biographical details, and signi®cantly deeper than any literal or 

pre-existing meaning. 

Even though I ®nd the biographical material priceless, and sometimes 

mention it in relation to Burton's imagery, I have no intention of reducing 

his ®lms to his childhood complexes. The symbolic core of his cinematic 

imagery ± the abandoned child±monster ± cannot be discussed entirely in 

biographical terms. Any uninterrupted analysis of Burton's ®lms in terms 

of his introversion, failure to communicate or his poor relationship with his 

parents would be ethically incorrect and methodologically incomplete. `The 

monster' is not simply an imprint of Burton's own feelings towards the 

outside world which he perceives as `hostile in its normality'. Far from that, 

the image of the monster acquires independence and becomes an archetype 

± a ¯uid, symbolic representation of a whole range of psychological phenomena 

± from the child±saviour who can perform miracles, and the 

creative punk born in a Gothic castle, to the antidogmatic rebel with a 

political stance. A nonconformist director, who has to defend his ideas 

from the studio heads, is only one aspect of the multi-faceted symbol. 

Meanwhile, the audience is full of outcasts who feel unique and misunderstood, 

and each viewer adds his or her personal dimension to the image, 

thus adding to the picture's interpretative volume. Being litmus papers for 

the state of culture, the best ®lms resonate in many a soul; and that is why 

Burton's Gothic tales of a loner's con¯ict with society have a very wide fanaudience. 

Which probably means that `the crowd' is not so ordinary, cruel 

and insensitive, after all. 



In his book Sculpting in Time, Andrey Tarkovsky discusses the use of 

ready-made, intellectual and decipherable imagery in ®lmmaking. He 

considers such practices bad taste. Signs that are `®xed' by the director for 

the audience, images ready for consumption, are the ones that sti¯e the 

viewer's imagination rather than widen his or her range of vision. Not 

surprisingly, perhaps, as a long-shot director, he links such `sign-making' to 

clever montage: 

`Montage cinema' presents the audience with puzzles and riddles, 

makes them decipher symbols, take pleasure in allegories, appealing all 

the time to their intellectual experience. Each of these riddles, however, 

has its own exact, word for word solution; so I feel that Eisenstein 

prevents the audience from letting their feelings be in¯uenced by their 

own reaction to what they see. When in October he juxtaposes a 

balalaika with Kerensky, his method has become his aim, in the way 

that ValeÂry meant. The construction of the image becomes an end in 

itself, and the author proceeds to make a total onslaught on the 

audience, imposing upon them his own attitude to what is happening. 

(Tarkovsky, 1989: 118) 

Such methods, Tarkovsky argues, àre utterly inimical', and contradict `the 

very basis of the unique process whereby a ®lm affects an audience. 

Directors obsessed with associative montage `make thought into a despot: it 

leaves no `àir'', nothing of that unspoken elusiveness which is perhaps the 

most captivating quality of all art' (2000: 183). 

Tim Burton is no Eisenstein. An anti-intellectual ®lmmaker, he does not 

make an effort to create `signs'. He remains in the realm of the symbolic, 

operating with the images that are personally dear to him, which also 

happen to be so `loose' that their interpretive range is endless. Edward's 

blade-hands, apart from Burton's own inability to communicate (which is 

the most obvious interpretation), also represent the double-edge (and the 

edginess) of creativity, the creator's de®ciency, his inner darkness, and the 

inevitable tension between the creative intention and the ®nal result. 

A psychoanalytic approach ± Freudian, Lacanian, Kleinian, etc. ± tends 

to view human nature in a ®xedly negative light. While Freud's theories are 

veiled with biological determinism, Lacan's ideas of the unconscious structured 

like a language display an equally fatalistic approach to the psychic life 

of man. Once trapped in the trans-individual symbolic order, or a variety of 

such orders, an individual cannot change his destiny. The Lacanian man is 

surrounded by endless rigid cultural signi®ers, and mourns the impossibility 

of controlling the process of signi®cation because the signi®ed will always 

escape, and the precious moment of communication will be lost. In other 

words, human civilisation is yet another existentialist failure because the 



`meaning' can never be èxact'. Rather tragically, the signi®ed cannot be 

pinned down. Linguistic sign is a utopian concept per se. 

In contrast to various pro-Freudian manifestations of pre- and postexistentialist 

sadness, Jung never limited himself to the analysis of linguistic 

structures; instead, he was more interested in the visual manifestation of the 

symbol ± in the image. As Oliver Davies puts it, `Whereas the Lacanian 

unconscious is composed of potentially word-forming linguistic structures, 

the Jungian (collective) unconscious is made up of structures with a potential 

for image formation' (Baumlin et al., 2004: 66±67). Images, not words, 

are what hold the primary importance for Jung. 

Moreover, ìmages', for Jung, can be further subdivided into `personalised' 

(concrete realisations) and `collective' (abstract ideas) or more 

concrete archetypal images and abstract archetypes (CW9/I: paras. 1±9). It 

is important to differentiate between the two. An archetype is an irrepresentable 

idea, whereas archetypal images are concrete realisations of archetypes 

in dreams, fantasies, myths, etc. In Jung's own words, `the perceptible 

archetypal image is not identical with the inherited form [i.e. archetype], 

which allows an inde®nite number of empirical expressions' (Jung, Letters, 

quoted in Walker, 2002: 12). For instance, `dying-and-rising god' is an 

archetype, but Osiris, Dionysus and Jesus are archetypal images. Similarly, 

female initiation of sexual contact is an archetype, whereas stories of 

Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, and Bluebeard's castle are 

archetypal situations. 

People may be separated from each other at the level of the personal 

unconscious, which is predetermined by cultural and familial factors. Put 

simply, we are different because we have been shaped by different circumstances. 

As a result, our linguistic signi®eds (to use Lacan's terminology) or 

image-signi®eds (to follow Jung's reasoning) do not, and cannot, match. 

However, human beings are united `further down' (or is it further up?), at 

the collective unconscious level, which is free of the constraints of formal 

signi®cation because it deals exclusively with basic, symbolic ideas. 

All the while, even the concretised archetypal images unite people, and 

tap into their experiences, better than the heroically utopian linguistic signs, 

in which the signi®er is forever attempting to entrap the signi®ed, and 

forever fails to do so (Derrida's diffeÂrence). In the Jungian universe, the fact 

that symbols cannot be precisely deciphered, or equally understood by 

everyone, is not tragic ± it is a necessary, and important, aspect of the 

human condition. Symbols unite people by the very fact of their indeterminability 

because they contain unlimited space for interpretation and 

ampli®cation. Abstract ideas, or archetypes, exist equally for everyone, and 

it is up to the individual to dress them up in appropriate clothes. Civilisation 

is not a failed project ± it is an un®nished project (rather like 

Edward Scissorhands); it has space for dynamics and development. Jung's 

is a `half-full', rather than `half-empty', view of human nature. When `the 



father of signi®cation' is dead, it is time to go back to abstraction, to the 

symbol, and to re-establish dialogue with the unconscious on her terms, in 

her language. 

At the same time, as a tool for critical interpretation, Jungian psychology 

certainly lacks precision. A cinema or literary critic will sooner or later 

notice gaps in Jungian theories which would have to be covered up using 

alternative methods ± for instance, elements of semiotic analysis. That Tim 

Burton operates predominantly with basic symbols accessible to the audience 

via èmotional connection' does not exclude other, stricter methodologies. 

Even if the unconscious is not structured like a language, this does 

not mean that elements of linguistic analysis do not possess the potential to 

illuminate its contents. It's like trying to ®nd the nearest possible key to the 

mysterious door behind which lies the unknown. 

True, to some extent, using semiotics and structuralism in contemporary 

cinematic criticism would mean looking in the direction of the failed project 

of modernity; it would be an exercise in rational organisation of the world. 

Drawing on various Enlightenment philosophies, the structuralist framework 

presupposed (to quote Fredric Jameson) that there is some ```preestablished 

harmony'' between the structures of the mind (and ultimately of 

the brain) and the order of the outside world' (Jameson, 1975: 110). The 

world is a potentially `decodable' place because the entire sign-system 

somehow corresponds to all of reality (1975: 110). Burton himself is not a 

big fan of instrumental rationality and its legacy. In several of his ®lms, 

including Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes, he disarms 

rationality's utopian habit of wrapping the universe into a web of rigid 

structures (language, scienti®c knowledge, etc.). Instead, he accepts the 

chaotic state of modern existence ± because chaos is the ideal working 

ground for the artist. The artist re-assembles the world from pieces. 

Burton's own creations are the result of this world-making activity. The 

`pre-established harmony', or Paradise, has been lost, but humans can 

regain it by being creative. 

However, structuralism and semiotics, employed sparingly, also help to 

òrganise a meaning' out of chaos. Not the absolute, scienti®c meaning of 

structuralism, but the relative, imprecise, approximate, ampli®ed meaning. 

In this book, structuralism and semiotics are not the principal analytical 

tools, but are used as secondary ampli®catory instruments. They illuminate 

only one corner of the complex landscape that is Tim Burton's oeuvre. 

A post-Jungian perspective is more appropriate for the analysis of 

Burton's Gothic mythologies than a Freudian or even a post-Freudian 

approach because, instead of hierarchising `truths', such a perspective 

would foreground perspectivism and pluralism (Hauke and Alister, 2001: 

2). Working ùpwards' from the basic `personal' interpretation, one can 

involve bigger, and more general, layers of the symbol; such as (in the case 

of Edward's blades) the Maker's `Janus' nature, the impossibility of 


absolute good and the perennial existentialist problem of `losing' God the 

father. In any case, a wide-scale, `deferred' symbol leaves space (or àir', to 

use Tarkovsky's expression) for the viewer's personal projections. Luke 

Hockley writes that 

While remaining alert to the dangers of overstating the case, it may be 

that ®lms give a symbolic expression to elements of the psyche that 

have been repressed. Unwittingly, we recognize on the screen images of 

our unconscious. The literal form of projection in the cinema turns out 

to mirror the process of psychological projection. Jung remarks that 

``projections change the world into a replica of one's unknown face'' 

(CW 9.2: 17). So, too, we can recognize elements of unconscious lives, 

emotional, social, political, and so forth, on the silver screen. 

(Baumlin et al., 2004: 78) 

Similarly, Christopher Hauke and Ian Alister argue that ®lms can àct as a 

therapeutic point of reference where unconscious aspects of the self can be 

seen in projection' (Hauke and Alister, 2001: 11). Seen in this light, 

Burton's ®lms provide their audiences with a wide projective and therapeutic 

potential. The person watching can place himself into the vast 

mythological scheme visualised on the screen precisely because of the 

democracy and ¯exibility of this scheme. Burton's ùncon®ned', ¯exible 

approach is what makes him so popular. Myth, with its formal simplicity, 

generality and internationality, is an essentially democratic phenomenon. 

Burton and the archetypes 


Burton's on-screen imagery forms a complex net of archetypes, which, in 

their visualised form, become recognisable and `relatable' archetypal images 

and situations. One of them is especially important for understanding the 

psychology of the Burtonian male hero ± the archetype of the self. 

Archetypes, as Jung saw them, are `primordial types. Or universal images 

that have existed since the remotest times' (Jung, 1954: CW9/I: para. 5). 

Unlike complexes that inhabit the personal level of the unconscious, 

archetypes reside in its collective part. The archetypes, Jolande Jacobi 

explains, 

make up the actual content of the collective unconscious; their number 

is relatively limited for it corresponds to `the number of typical and 

fundamental experiences' incurred by man since primordial times. 

Their meaning for us lies precisely in the `primordial experience' which 

is based on them and which they represent and communicate. [. . .] We 

®nd them recurring in all mythologies, fairy tales, religious traditions 



and mysteries. [. . .] Prometheus the stealer of ®re, Heracles the dragon 

slayer, the countless creation myths, the fall from paradise, the mysteries 

of creation, the virgin birth, the treacherous betrayal of the hero, 

the dismembering of Osiris, and many other myths and fairy tales 

represent psychic processes in symbolic images. Similarly, the ®gures of 

the snake, the ®sh, the sphinx, the helpful animals, the Tree of the 

World, the Great Mother, the enchanted prince, the puer aeternus, the 

Mage, the Wise Man, Paradise, etc., stand for certain motifs and 

contents of the collective unconscious. 

(Jacobi, 1973: 47) 

In man's psychic life the archetypes are part of what Jung called `the 

individuation process', or simply ìndividuation'. Jolande Jacobi, a ®rstgeneration 

follower of Jung, de®nes this process as gradual self-ful®lment, 

self-realisation `both in the individual and . . . in the collective sense' (Jacobi, 

1973: 106). In other words, individuation is personal development which 

leads towards psychic wholeness ± `when both parts of the total psyche, 

consciousness and the unconscious, are linked together in a living relation'. 

The complete union of the two psychic systems is an unattainable goal, but 

the good news is that relative differentiation is possible (1973: 105). 

In his book Human Being Human (2005) Christopher Hauke provides a 

contemporary outlook on the individuation process. He de®nes individuation 

as `the urge found in all living things to persist in becoming themselves; 

in human terms this means the development of the individual personality 

and becoming the person you were meant to be or the person you have 

always had the potential of being. [. . .] It lies at the core of what I mean by 

human being human' (Hauke, 2005: 65). The important point is that the 

individuation process implies, to some extent, a con¯ict with society, 

because, in becoming an individual, one may start questioning collective 

norms and traditions. The differentiation of the personality, Christopher 

Hauke writes, ìs not only the differentiation of unconscious from conscious 

contents but the further differentiation of the personal unconscious from 

the collective' (2005: 65). We will come back to this point in later chapters 

when discussing Burton's characters' relationship with society, and their 

blatant refusal to comply with the collective norms. 

Burton tends to create heroes who do not want to abide by any rules but 

their own. They feel that rules do not exist a priori but are always laid out by 

a person, or people, who currently have the power to create spoken or 

written legislation in a particular community or group. Burton's protagonists 

refuse to accept the òf®cial' version of the world; they constantly 

`defamiliarise' the of®cial picture, make it different, strange, ùglily creative'. 

Looking at the world through magic binoculars, they can notice things other 

people cannot see. Burton once said about his own perception of the outside 

world: `When you are a kid, you think everything is strange, and you think it 



is because you're a kid, everything is strange. Then when you get older, you 

realize everything really is strange' (Woods, 2002: 66). From the point of 

view of the community, the `different' perception of the environment is a 

sign of madness; from the point of view of the individual, it is a chance 

to exercise one's independent thinking. And it sometimes happens with 

Burton's protagonists that their individuation becomes individualism, à sort 

of self-centered concern which ignores the wishes and needs of others' 

(Hauke, 2005: 65). Individualism in Burton's ®lms equals (often selfin¯icted) 

loneliness. 

Following Jolande Jacobi's summary of Jung's ideas, the signposts and 

milestones of individuation are marked by speci®c archetypes: the shadow 

(personal and collective), animus and anima, the wise old man, the great 

mother, and various versions of the self (the child, the hero, etc.). The 

personal shadow, in Jacobi's de®nition, is à part of the individual, a splitoff 

portion of his being which nevertheless remains attached to him ``like 

his shadow''' (Jacobi, 1973: 109±110). In Freudian psychology the same 

phenomenon is labelled doppelgaÈnger, while the literary term is traditionally 

the double. When undifferentiated, this function becomes ``òur dark side'', 

the inborn collective predisposition which we reject for ethical, aesthetic, or 

other reasons, and repress because it is in opposition to our conscious 

principles' (1973: 110). Put simply, the shadow is the `dark brother', a place 

for projections in the human psyche, where all the dangerous, inhuman, 

atavistic, repressed desires accumulate. This ®gure is not easy to recognise 

and make conscious, because its activation in the psyche is bound with 

projections ± i.e. we can only see our own negative traits when they are 

mirrored back to us by other people, in which case we tend to think that the 

traits belong to them and not to us. To use an unpleasant but functional 

metaphor, the shadow is civilisation's psychic garbage can which can 

explode if left unobserved. 

The collective shadow arrives precisely when individuals have been 

unaware of their inner problems while being in¯uenced en masse by some 

powerful external force ± for instance, a political ideology. Because 

mankind is not `just an accumulation of individuals' but possesses à high 

degree of psychological collectivity' (Jung, 1910, CW18: para. 927), all 

human control `comes to an end when the individual is caught up in a mass 

movement' (Jung, 1936, CW10: para. 395). There are several prominent 

`shadows' in Burton's ®lms, including the Joker and Sweeney Todd. However, 

it is too extensive a topic to cover in the Introduction, so we will 

postpone full analysis until Chapter 5 (`The Maniac'), in which this archetype 

will be discussed in relation to the trickster. 

Another archetype which stands out prominently in Burton's oeuvre is the 

self. The self is a complex psychological and metaphysical concept which was 

devised by Jung to illustrate man's innate propensity for psychological 

maturation and spiritual growth. According to Jung, the self is bigger than 



the ego, which is the centre only of consciousness. 6 It is at the core of the 

individuation process because it stands for the whole of the psyche, both 

consciousness and the unconscious. Jung conceived the self as a `supraordinate 

personality' which regulates the psyche and is in charge of the individuation 

process (Jung, 1951, CW9/I: para. 306). It strives to heal the split 

within ± inner problems ± as well as the person's con¯icts with the outside 

world. Individuation, in fact, is a gradual integration of the self's warring 

components, the binary opposites. The self, Jolande Jacobi writes, ìs a 

centre of tension between two worlds and their forces which we know only 

dimly but feel all the more strongly' (Jacoby, 1973: 131). In dreams and fairy 

tales it can manifest itself in a number of images ± usually indicating its 

heroic struggle for psychic wholeness: religious ®gures such as Christ and 

Buddha, folklore heroes like Heracles, King Arthur and Siegfried, as well as 

contemporary mythological characters ± for instance, Superman, Batman 

and Harry Potter. 

Interestingly enough, Burton's `children' never become àdult heroes' ± 

i.e. they never grow up, or outgrow their infantile complexes. They prefer to 

continue existing in proximity to the darkness of the unconscious, rather 

than adopt an adult, mature, conscious attitude to the world ± hence the 

Gothic, twilight colouring of most of Burton's ®lms. His male heroes are 

also quite unusual (they lack many a required `heroic' and masculine 

quality), while the female characters he creates are not as scary and 

powerful as traditional anima ®gures. 

For instance, a typical hero myth is characterised by the strong presence 

of the ànima motif'. On his quest the hero is bound to encounter a kind 

female creature who offers him her knowledge and experience. Alternatively, 

she can happen to be a dangerous witch who cunningly devises to 

devour him. Confrontation with an anima ®gure (which will be discussed in 

detail in the chapter about the superhero) is an important stage of the 

hero's journey because it symbolises the battle for the deliverance from 

the mother (both real and symbolic). On a larger scale, it stands for the ever 

complex relationship between civilisation and Mother Nature, and for 

human consciousness striving to control its instincts. 

Interestingly enough, the Burtonian anima is more often pliable (usually 

a `Gothic angel' 7 ) than dangerous, and even when she is aggressive and 

6 By contrast, the unconscious does not have a centre and às a rule, the unconscious phenomena 

manifest themselves in fairly chaotic and unsystematic form'. If there were such a centre, Jung 

argues, `we could expect almost regular signs of its existence. Cases of dual personality would 

then be frequent occurrences rather than rare curiosities' (Jung, 1939, CW9/I: para. 492). 

7 Winona Ryder's characters ± Lydia (Beetlejuice) and Kim (Edward Scissorhands); Kim 

Basinger's portrayal of Vicki Vale in Batman; Katrina Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow, Sally in 

The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Mrs Lovett from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of 

Fleet Street. 



harmful (the Catwoman, the Witch from Big Fish, the female Martian from 

Mars Attacks), she does not occupy the centre stage of the con¯ict. One 

exception to this rule would be The Corpse Bride. Its plot is entirely based 

on the dual anima/angel±whore motif. Most of Burton's ®lms, however, 

revolve around the issues related to social maturity and conformity. In 

other words, his hero quests do not usually delve into the anima problem. 

So far, the female heroine has only been prominent in The Corpse Bride, 

and more or less noticeable in Big Fish (the Witch/Jenny/Sandra), while in 

the rest of his ®lms it is relegated to the background. 

A much more substantial problem for Burton's weird, enchanted children 

is `the crowd'. The prospect of integrating into community is perceived by 

them as truly horrifying. Even the most dangerous anima is a more distant 

threat for Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Ed Wood than the call to 

`face the public'. The vital difference between the Burtonian character and 

`them' is that he is in motion, he is searching, he wants `to know' ± quite in 

contrast to the stagnation and complacency of his environment. Unable to 

live near this stagnation, he distances himself from it ± like Edward 

Scissorhands who chooses the solitary life of `the man in the high castle' 

over the suburban lifestyle, or Edward Bloom (Big Fish) who, having 

outgrown his village, leaves his unambitious neighbours behind and `goes 

to seek his fortune'. 

In his attempt to recreate his heroes' hunger for `knowledge', Burton 

often employs the motif of èarly science' ± the body of knowledge that is 

neither a `proper' science, nor is it art. Ideologically, it is akin to alchemy. 

His scienti®cally minded protagonists, armed with an assortment of extravagant 

tools, in bogus laboratories poke and probe, assemble and disassemble 

their monstrous victims in the hope, like their literary predecessor 

Victor Frankenstein, of robbing Mother Nature, and stealing `the secret 

of life'. Little Victor Frankenstein (Frankenweenie), Dr Finkelstein (The 

Nightmare Before Christmas), Jack Skellington, the inventor of Edward 

Scissorhands, and Willie Wonka all manufacture hideous creatures using 

crude, pseudo-scienti®c methods. This is very much in tune with Andrey 

Tarkovsky's statement that art, like science ìs a means of assimilating the 

world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of man's journey towards 

what is called `àbsolute truth''' (Tarkovsky, 1989: 37). 

Tim Burton seems to think that cinematic art, like all monsters, has to be 

crude. Art is something you do with your hands (well, he came from 

animation), and because the creator is human, and hands are not the perfect 

tool, the end result is bound to be imperfect. The images and materials have 

to look rough, and the seams, like the literal seams and scars on the bodies 

of Edward Scissorhands, Sally, Emily and the Joker, have to be visible. 

That is why, in Burton's case, the perfection of cinematic techniques is 

not as important as the initial impulse to create, to express a feeling, to give 

the audience a space where they can connect with the archetypes on their 



own terms, and at their own pace. As Burton's creative wingman, Rick 

Heinrichs, puts it, `the budgets have gotten bigger, there's more ambition, 

but still, in all of Tim's ®lms, the animated and live action, his sensibility 

seeps into every corner ± a Burtonesque feeling prevails. His aesthetic 

eschews the polish and patness of what comes with cutting-edge technology 

because he's after an emotional connection that is much more immediate 

and involving' (Matthews and Smith, 2007: 280). 

Crudity seems to be the necessary prerequisite for freedom of expression 

and perception, projection and introjection. 

After all, cinema is the kind of magic that creates life out of `lifeless 

matter'.

Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd - A Post-Jungian Perspective

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